… and move on: an outlook on Out of Context by Les Ballets C de la B

To start 2010 with some move forward .. what could be better in this context than Alain Platel’s Out of Context, which I already had the luck to see in an excerpt at the Tanzkongress 2009, which took place in Hamburg under the nicely ambiguous title “No Step without Movement!” (see video).

It is certainly a piece worth to be seen – and in no way related to any ‘poor’ crisis concepts or purely ‘hysterical’ expressions – as Alain Platel explained in an interview. It simply was due to an ‘out of context’ situation for his group of dancers, which he feared would drive them apart. Though his intention to hold them together and bridge the time, brought this piece – based on minimal budget – alive:

“I am not referring to hysteria as a disease, but rather as an expression of oversensitivity to life. Whenever words are unable to express our innermost emotions, the body takes over.”

ALAIN PLATEL

The body in a state of ecstasy

No hidden tricks, no trade secrets. In his latest production Alain Platel is returning to the basis of dance creation. Based on his belief in the power of the human body as an emotional tool, as a bearer of memory, as the raw material for living visual art.

In Out of Context, this internationally acclaimed choreographer and dancer is after a gap of many years once again giving a world premiere in his home country. Whereas Platel flirted with the boundaries of opera in VSPRS and more recently in pitié!, in Out of Context it is not music that provides the driving force. Nor any grand set, or costumes other than what the dancers might simply have had in their suitcases. Yet Out of Context is not a piece for the recession. The limitations show the hand of the master. Each and every one of the nine dancers with whom Platel enters into this adventure are virtuoso artists of the body, and over recent years they have covered a lot of ground together. Out of Context is founded on the constructive dialogue that the choreographer and dancers pursue on the basis of their individual obsessions. The result could well be quite surprising – intimate, inviting, moving – and much less ‘out of context’ than the title might suggest.